


It's Time

by violent_ends



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Angst, Character Death, F/M, Future Fic, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, POV Lucifer, Post-Season/Series 04, Sad, Sad Ending, Sad Lucifer Morningstar (Lucifer TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-09
Updated: 2019-08-09
Packaged: 2020-08-13 14:36:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20175886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/violent_ends/pseuds/violent_ends
Summary: [Post-Season 4 future fic]In which Lucifer never returns to Earth after retaking the Throne of Hell, until decades down the line, Azrael visits him to inform him that someone's time in the mortal world is running out."Lucifer closed his eyes. Flashes of blond hair and soft, pink lips ran through his mind, washing over him, almost enough to make him lose his balance where he stood. The smell of breakfast in her kitchen, and of her freshly clean skin right after shower; the feel of her hand in his, squeezing; the intensity of her gaze when she saidI love you, don't go.For a moment, her voice was so loud in his ears that it drowned the screams of the damned."





	It's Time

**Author's Note:**

> As heartbreaking as it is, I really felt like exploring the giant elephant in the room that at some point I assume Lucifer will have to face: Chloe's mortality, and his lack thereof. I hate myself a little bit but I had to get the idea out of my head.

“Bloody hell,” Lucifer exclaimed, looking at the angelic figure staring back at him from midair, “if it isn't my little sister Azrael herself, gracing us with her holy presence.”

Azrael was flapping her wings in front of him, looking down at his throne with her arms crossed over her chest. She had a glint of defiance in her eyes, but Lucifer actually enjoyed it. Teasing her was fun, because she always knew how to find a good comeback.

"Would you mind getting down?” she snapped, one eyebrow raised. “This has to be the most uncomfortable, least practical throne that ever existed.”

"Can't argue with that" Lucifer conceded. He straightened his suit, stood up and unfurled his wings, staring at his sister with a wicked grin of pride. He knew she was envious of them – they all were, since the beginning of time. He reveled in the way Azrael rolled her eyes at him, trying to dismiss the feeling.

They both flew down, down, down until they reached the base of the throne of Hell. It stood at the center of a circular space, right in the middle of the infinite maze of cells that was the Underworld. A cloud of ashes rose up from the floor as they landed – Lucifer hated it, hated the way his suits got dirty in no time down there. All around them, distant and dulled but still audible if you concentrated long enough, echoed screams and sounds of pleading, begging, crying, cursing. Lucifer was used to it by now.

"So, what brings you here in my marvellous resort? I'm sorry to inform you all rooms are occupied” he told his sister, who clearly wasn't as comfortable as he was. She was trying to hide it but she was fidgety, uneasy. Lucifer supposed it had something to do with the fact that the possibility of meeting someone she had killed – well, not exactly killed, but still – was very, very real, and she didn't seem to like it.

That was an excuse, though. She had never come to visit him since his return to Hell; none of his siblings had. And the reason was very simple: they were all scared he would find a way to trick them into taking his place as King of Hell, so he could return to Earth. Home. To _her_. Oh, the tale had spread quickly in the Silver City, he knew: the tale of the Prince of Darkness willingly accepting the job he had complained about for millennia without batting an eye, all for the wellbeing of a bunch of humans – and specifically, his love for a mortal woman. Such juicy gossip.

He had expected Azrael to reply with something clever, or annoyed. Instead, the Angel of Death stared at him in a deep, contemplating way that made Lucifer's skin crawl with fear. _Something has happened. Something bad._

"Luce", she said, with a fondness that he had missed for far too long now – it had been decades since he had left, decades spent without a single touch from another being, a smile, a kiss. “Luce, it's time.”

He knew what she meant. Of course he did. He had lost count of the years, but he knew they had been many. It only made sense.

Lucifer had never given in to the temptation of flying back to Earth, not even for a day, or a moment. Not even when his demons seemed way too occupied with their torturing to mind what he was doing; not even when he had just punished them so harshly, for whatever reason, that they wouldn't even dare to look him in the eye. Because he knew that if he did go back to Earth from time to time, leaving would be more difficult each time.

But most importantly, he had stopped himself for Chloe. He had forced himself to stay away from her, digging his own nails in the skin of his forearms every time he had spread his wings to actually try. He loved her too much to interfere with her life like that, after leaving her. If he started popping back in her daily routine whenever he pleased, she would never move on and be happy.

And yet, his mind struggled to process what Azrael meant. He had dealt with human mortality plenty of times while working for the police, but this... this was different.

"I see" he croaked, only then realizing his voice was faltering, betraying him. He couldn't even look Azrael in the eye when he cleared his throat and continued. “H-How?”

"Peacefully, in her sleep" his sister said, staring at him intently, trying to figure out what to add, how to talk to him. “You still have a couple of hours, if you want to...”

She trailed off, but Lucifer knew what she wanted to say. _If you want to say goodbye._ He swallowed, hard. Rage and hurt bubbled up from within him with such brutal force that he had to actually will his eyes not to turn red. He wanted to punch or throw something, but it wouldn't have done him any good. So he turned vicious. His specialty, and his weakness.

"So you came down here to let me know?” he asked, his voice as cold as ice. “How very kind of you to grant me this basic courtesy.”

Azrael looked at him with understanding instead of hurt, which enraged him even more. It was unbearable, when his siblings saw right through him instead of taking the bait.

"Of course, Lu" she said. The shorter his name became, the more endearing it was meant to be – Lucifer knew that by now. “I know what she means to you. I... I will stay here, until you're back.”

It was a huge demonstration of trust, to say that. It was a risk she was taking. But it made sense, Lucifer realized: Azrael had been the angel on Ella's shoulder, so she knew full well how deeply a celestial could get attached to a mortal. It rarely happened, but when it did, well, it ran deep. Their feelings, their desires, their longing – they were all as immortal and unchanging as their bodies and minds.

Yet he persisted, because he felt like his soul, as old as the world itself, was shattering.

"Don't you _dare_ presume to know" he growled, and this time his eyes did flash red, for a second. “You got yourself a human BFF or whatever you want to call her, and now you think you know how I feel? _None_ of you know. You never did. You never _cared_.”

This time, she got hurt, and he regretted it. But she soldiered on, intent on not letting him get to her, and for that he actually felt proud of his little sister. Azrael studied him with eyes that were young and old at the same time; as lively and naïve as those of a 14-year-old and as wise as those of the oldest woman in the universe.

"Stop wasting your time trying to piss me off, Lu" she said bluntly. Her eyes softened. “Go now, before it's too late.”

Lucifer felt a little ashamed, because she was right. The fists he had balled up at his sides relaxed a little bit. Azrael took the opportunity to push a note into his hand, with an address scribbled on it, he figured.

"Thank you" he told her, looking down at the stone floor. She didn't have to come all the way down there, after all. She didn't have to take his throne, even if temporarily. If she was willing to do that, it was because she cared about him. Azrael nodded and gave him a sad little smile.

Lucifer closed his eyes. Flashes of blond hair and soft, pink lips ran through his mind, washing over him, almost enough to make him lose his balance where he stood. The smell of breakfast in her kitchen, and of her freshly clean skin right after shower; the feel of her hand in his, squeezing; the intensity of her gaze when she said _I love you, don't go._

For a moment, her voice was so loud in his ears that it drowned the screams of the damned.

Lucifer sighed, spread his wings and took off.

*

He landed as softly as he could on the floor of a hospital room, in the middle of the night. Outside the window, the multicolored lights of L.A. reminded him of the flashy, exciting life he used to live among mortals. But inside, there was a completely different set of lights: dull, almost empty of any spark, their loud beeping sound a clear indication of how they were working against time and fate itself to prolong the permanence of a human soul on Earth.

They reminded Lucifer of another moment in time, a long while back, but he had the memory of an immortal being and every instant of his infinite existence was engraved into his brain, like a mark burnt into his flesh. He remembered Chloe in a hospital bed, Death almost knocking at the door to her soul, tainted with deceit and poison. He remembered her tiny, pale, delicate frame surrounded by tubes and wires, almost disappearing inside the too-big hospital gown. And she wasn't that different to him in that moment.

Chloe’s hair was white now, and her skin was wrinkled by the passing of time. She was sleeping softly, unaware of his presence. And to Lucifer, she was as beautiful as the first time he had seen her. He shifted on the spot, not knowing what to do; he longed to touch her, to stroke her hair, but it wasn't his place anymore. There might be a husband lingering somewhere nearby, or some other new person in her life who would object to the Devil approaching her. For good measure, he folded his wings back into himself – for a moment, he had forgotten that he wasn't supposed to show them.

He took a tentative first step towards Chloe's bed, but it was in that instant that someone walked into the room, gasping. Lucifer’s eyes shot to the door, and he froze. Then, slowly, he smiled.

"Hello, little urchin" he whispered, even though she clearly wasn't little anymore. His heart felt constricted in a vice at the memories: taking Trixie to school while pretending to be her dad, the child tugging annoyingly at his hand as he tried to get away; playing Monopoly on the floor in front of the fireplace and going back home with a glittery unicorn painted on the side of his face; all the way back to the first time he had met her, fierce and witty and so frustratingly bubbly.

Trixie – most likely Beatrice, now – stared at him in shock, her mouth opening and closing around words that never came. Lucifer sadly realized that she might not even know who he was. He wasn't sure of how human memory worked, exactly: he assumed she should have been able to remember him, but it might have depended on what Chloe had told her, afterwards. What was he now, to her? A man her mother used to hang out with, who left for a work trip and never came back? The monster under her bed, labeled as a recurring bad dream she had to move on from?

He started to panic a little, not knowing what to say to her to justify his presence, but thankfully he didn't need to.

"Lucifer" Trixie breathed out in one, long sigh, dragging out the name like she couldn't even believe she was saying it. One of her hands was clutching a coffee paper cup tightly, the other was lightly pressed over her chest as if to support herself. She had her brown hair tied up in a messy bun and a pair of glasses on her nose, but behind the lenses her eyes were the same, small and lively.

"Lucifer, you- you came" she continued. Her gaze slowly shifted from him to her mother's frame. “You came... for _her._”

Lucifer knew fear all too well not to recognize it in the eyes of humans. There had been a time when he had fed on it, relished in it, smugly proud of the way it snaked its way into the souls of the damned as he tortured them again, and again, and again. Not this human, though. Scaring Trixie always had been one of his biggest fears, ironically.

"Not- not in the way that you think" he reassured her quickly, moving his hands in the air in a calming gesture. “Actually, I came because... where she’ll go... I won't be able to follow.”

He knew he was going against the rules in letting her know that the time was approaching, but he figured she was already aware. He just didn't want her to think that her mother would ever go to such a wretched place as Hell was. It wasn't a place worthy of his Chloe. She belonged with the angels, just not with him.

"Oh" was all Trixie managed to say in response as her mind processed that. Fear disappeared from her eyes, and for that Lucifer was grateful. He had wanted to give all his attention to the sleeping figure laying between them, but he couldn't resist talking to Trixie just for a little longer – the pull of human contact and affection, he knew, was strong. It was precisely the reason he had never come back, not even for a visit.

"So you know who I am" he said, leaning back against the window behind him. Trixie walked closer to the bed and sat down on a chair next to it, before sipping at her coffee. With her free hand, she squeezed her sleeping mother's hand.

"She told me right after" was her answer. She looked up at him. “I was so mad at you, but I... after a while, I think I understood. But God, I missed you. We both did. Always.”

They both stared at Chloe then, both pulled by the peacefulness she was radiating, like a star whose light was slowly fading away. She wouldn't go out with a burst, Lucifer realized, but with a soft sigh. There was nothing better he could think of, for his Detective.

"Will you get in trouble for being here?” Trixie asked him after a minute of silence. It was so weird to think that she knew everything now, but at least it made things easier. Chloe had been so wise; well, no surprise there. She had always known the right thing to do, especially when it came to her offspring.

"No, don't worry. My... well, someone is covering for me.”

He didn't want to freak her out by mentioning his sister, because if she asked questions about her, Lucifer would have to explain that in a few hours she would come to snatch Chloe's soul from the mortal world forever. He'd rather leave Death to Trixie's imagination.

"Could I have a moment alone with her?” he ventured then. He hoped Trixie would understand. In a way, he was intruding in a very private moment, the most private in the life of a human, he knew. The one that, somehow, defined who they were and who they had been just as much as their very first breath. But he had stayed away, he had been selfless, he had behaved. _Stay, good Devil._ He deserved a moment with her, after everything. He knew he did.

"Of course" Trixie said. She stood up from the chair and made to walk away, offering it to him, but as Lucifer circled around the bed to sit down, she stopped and placed a hand on his shoulder. The first contact from a human, after decades, made him jump.

"Can I hug you first?” she asked, smiling with an affection that was inexplicably still there after all those years. After a whole lifetime. “I know you hated it back then, but I am not a child anymore.”

Lucifer nodded, chuckling. Trixie wasted no time and surrounded him with her embrace, and it was so damn strange, because now she looked even older than him. He had never found a single flaw in immortality, not one. But suddenly, he realized what Cain had feared his whole existence. It dawned on him then, and he didn't know why it hadn't sooner: he was outliving them, all of them. All the people he had met would be gone, and soon.

He found himself clinging to her back without noticing - didn't he hate hugs, in general?

"You still love her" Trixie whispered in his ear, one hand now stroking the back of his head soothingly – wait, why was _she_ comforting _him_? Only then he realized he had started trembling in her arms, his eyes squeezed shut. “Oh, Lucifer.”

He moved away from her slowly, straightening his jacket nervously. He cleared his throat, but it still felt hoarse from the screams he wanted to let out but couldn't. Trixie understood it was time to leave him be – as wise as her own mother, as was meant to be. She gave him a small nod and walked out of the room.

Lucifer sat down in the chair next to Chloe's bed. Tentatively, he put his hand on top of hers, amazed at how different her skin felt now. Every line was a moment in time he had not witnessed; every wrinkle was a laugh he had not shared. He would never grow old like that; not with her, not with anyone. Never evolving, never changing, and it never really bothered him before. The world was his feast and he had intended on enjoying it from the beginning until the end of times. But eternity looked much duller, ever since he left.

He had assumed Chloe would remain asleep, so he was surprised when he felt her hand stirring under his. Chloe's eyes fluttered open slowly, and looked at him in a slightly dazed, confused way. Lucifer held his breath and felt no shame in thinking _Please, Father, let her at least remember me._

"Lucifer" she whispered, and just hearing his name leave her lips after all those years made his legs go weak. “Are you- Is this a dream, or are you really here?”

Lucifer's mind traveled back to the very first time he had been at her bedside, after the first shooting they had experienced together. “Look who's back" he had said, before letting Chloe believe she had actually been out for years. He had no quips for her now; just a constricting feeling in his throat and in his chest, making it almost unbearable to speak. The clock on the opposite wall was loud in his ears, marking every minute, every second.

"I'm- I'm here" he managed to reply. Chloe squeezed his hand and smiled. She seemed serene, and strangely happy for someone forced to stay in bed. Lucifer hoped she had lived a good life, and it looked like she had.

"Oh, I must look _so_ old to you" she chuckled, her voice low and weak, like she was about to break. Lucifer smiled back as another distant memory resurfaced from the abyss of their brief life together.

"You look Heaven-sent" he said, just like he'd done back then. _And soon, Heaven will summon you back._

Chloe's eyes filled with tears at that, and as hard as he tried to hide it, so did Lucifer's. They looked at each other in silence, a thousand words floating in the air like feathers from his angel wings.

_My first love was never Eve. It was you, Chloe. It always has been._

_You can't leave me. Please, don't go. I love you_.

_You are special, and I'm not worth it._

_You make me vulnerable, and maybe that's okay_.

_Detective, will you go to the prom with me?_

_Lucifer Morningstar? What is that, a stage name or something?_

A whirlwind of moments swept them up and threatened to carry them away, a tornado of lost instants, shreds and broken pieces of what had been quintessentially _them._ They held on to each other, sure that together they'd survive the storm.

"Are you okay?” Chloe asked, breaking the loudest of silences, because of course she would worry about _him_, his Detective. _Ever selfless, to a nauseating degree._

_No, I'm not,_ Lucifer wanted to say. _I'm sorry I left, I'm sorry I came so late, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry._

"Yes" he lied instead. Well, he wasn't supposed to lie, but he felt like he had to. It wasn't about him. “How are you?”

It was probably a very stupid question to ask an old woman on her deathbed – he cringed internally at the word – but he genuinely wanted to make sure Chloe was at peace. And it wasn't just that. He had left her, he had broken her heart, and the most selfish part of Lucifer wanted, _needed_, to know that it had been worth it, and that somehow she had forgiven him. Not that that would give him peace, because there would never be such a thing, for him. Life back in Hell had been torment without her, and would continue to be after she was gone.

"I think so. I'm... I'm just a bit scared" Chloe said quietly, almost under her breath. She stared at him with those damned blue eyes, and Lucifer felt like he was falling from Heaven to Hell all over again. “I don't know if you're allowed to tell me, but... Lucifer, how is it? D-down there?”

And there it was, the moment of his tragic, pitiful, miserable landing.

"You- you think you're going to Hell?” he whispered in disbelief. The worst people he had ever encountered somehow always had the audacity to assume the pearly gates of Heaven would open for them, and here was Chloe, thinking she wasn't worthy. And Lucifer was no judge of who went up to the sky or down in the gutter, but if she really wasn't, humanity was doomed.

"I've killed people in the line of duty" she said instantly, and it was clear she had given it a lot of thought. “I... I've conspired against you, and when I invited Father Kinley to Los Angeles, people died because of it.”

"Because of _him_" Lucifer clarified. He threw his boundaries out the window and lifted his hand from hers to cover her cheek instead. She leaned into the touch as if it was still natural, like no time had passed, and distantly Lucifer realized that from the outside, they must have looked like a mother and a son. Instead he had loved her like a partner, and a friend, and a lover who had actually never been one if not in his dreams, and loved her still.

"As for the rest,” he continued, “you were protecting people from harm, always.”

He couldn't stop the flow of words that tumbled out of his mouth as he gently stroked Chloe's silvery hair.

"The pearly gates will open for you, my love. The light of the sun will warm your skin as you enter the Silver City. It is so, _so_ shiny, almost blinding, you'll see. No cloud ever covers the sun up there, no wind ever blows too hard, and it's never too cold or never too hot. Up from above the clouds, the world will seem so far away, but you will not miss it, I promise. You'll see your mum and your dad again, and Charlotte. You'll tell them hi from me, hopefully, but it's okay if you won't remember, too caught up in the excitement. It will be beautiful, it will be perfect, because if there ever was a place made for you, it is Heaven, Detective.”

A tear fell from Chloe's gentle, wiser eyes and Lucifer caught it with his thumb, letting it seep into her skin. Of course, Heaven had never been perfect for him, but as he described it to Chloe an old sadness gripped his heart again: memories of Uriel trying to keep up with him and Amenadiel as they chased each other; of Remiel's grumpiness and unbearable seriousness in reply to his quips; of Azrael calling him “big brother" and glaring at him every time he messed up the bangs on her forehead for the fun it.

"You know I'm retired, right?” Chloe said in reply to Lucifer's use of her title – but he knew her well, despite the years, and knew that she could recognize the misery in his eyes and was trying to chase it away. So he laughed, because it would make her feel better, as his soul curled up in a ball and cried.

Deep down he knew it wasn't supposed to make a difference: in spirit, Chloe would still exist – a celestial like him should know that more than anyone, instead of clinging to blind faith like humans. And after all, they couldn't be together on Earth, either, because in a way Lucifer had banned himself from it. But the idea of her dying, as natural as it should have been, was a hundred times more painful than a demon blade cutting through his flesh.

"You'll always be a detective to me" he told her. “_My_ Detective.”

Chloe smiled, her eyes looking sleepier all of a sudden, hooded, half-closed. She slowly lifted a hand to mirror Lucifer's position, placing it on his cheek. Lucifer closed his eyes and breathed in deeply through his nose. She smelled the same. She smelled like home.

"And you'll always be my handsome Devil.”

With that, she went back to sleep. It wasn't her time, not yet, but it would be soon. So Lucifer waited. He sat there for another couple of hours, with Trixie on a chair on the other side of the bed. She told him about her job and her marriage, about things that shouldn't have mattered but did, filling him in as if he was just a relative who had come back home after being at sea, or in war. Lucifer listened, but didn't say much, his eyes never leaving Chloe.

He wanted to ask Trixie if someone had loved her mother like she deserved, at least half as much as he loved her, but there was no man at Chloe's bedside, so either she was alone or she had suffered a loss. He decided he didn't want to know, and never looked at her hand long enough to see if there was a wedding ring.

When Trixie excused herself to go to the bathroom, Azrael arrived. She had the ability to be invisible to the eyes of humans when she wanted, to carry out her holy, God-given duty, but Lucifer knew she had deliberately waited for the right moment, to find him alone.

"Are you ready?” his sister asked him quietly, standing between the bed and the window.

_As if I could ever be._

Lucifer didn't answer. He stood up and kissed Chloe's forehead.

“Be gentle with her" he said, before turning around and leaving the room to go into the hallway. His back slumped against the wall just outside the room, he collapsed to the floor and buried his head in his hands, fingers squeezing at his scalp. He released his grip and actually pressed his nails into his own palms, drawing blood from the small indentations he had just created.

_Oh. Right._

The thought crossed his mind. It did, Lucifer would not deny. A terrible sin in the eyes of his Father, an insult to his gift of creation, especially if pondered by a celestial. He considered snatching a scalpel from a tray and cutting his own wrists, because if he wanted it to end, that was the time: he would not have a second chance, because Chloe was leaving. Leaving Earth, leaving life, leaving him.

But Lucifer could not bring himself to do it. Call it self-preservation, or selfishness. Mostly, he didn't do it because Chloe wouldn't have wanted him to.

A flap of wings shook the floor under his feet; too light to hear for humans who didn't know they had to look for it, but unmistakable to the ears of an angel.

"Goodbye, Detective" he said as he looked up at the ceiling and pretended it was the starry sky. “Goodbye, Chloe.”


End file.
